21.2.13

Periapsis Music & Dance

When
the lights fade, the dancer vibrates in an expectation of release that is only achieved
through stretching, pulling time tight and close as they become aware of an end
of this time, this dance. The body’s anticipation of completion saturates
movement – making
it fuller – and echoes though the pores, illuminating the skin. The lights
fade, the body glows.

Periapsis Music and Dance’s Inaugural Concert merges dance and music, with equal weight
given to both art forms. This leaves you to watch the movement or close your
eyes and simply listen, as you please. I am sorry that I cannot close my eyes
and tell you about what I listened to with anything approaching analytical
comprehension. This, then, is a commentary on the dancing. Specifically, on the
moment before the end of the dancing, so close to “FIN” it might as well be the
credits. That time, that last inward breath, is when Periapsis is sublime.

And
it ends.

From
the last, Periapsis is urgent and wonderfully greedy with time and space. Sarah Mettin’s
“Crescit eundo” has 5 dancers. They are individually huge performers.
Travelling, shifting low or pricking the ground neatly, the pelvis accepts the
strength of the floor. They are flesh merged with wood. Calm energy of each
performer is broken by movement that invokes an idea of martial arts, with
quick punctuations and blows. Damani Pompey and Weaver Rhodes, the two males in
this piece, make complicated and uncodified lifts an inevitability. Air slips
aside as the bodies merge. Mettin has gathered a group of dancers too smart to
make the movement about themselves. From the start to finish, they are complete
and generous, bringing us into their buzzing chamber of energy until the lights
fade. And then the concert is over.

This
is not how Periapsis middles or begins, although there are moments of great
connection between dancer and musician or dancer and the dance. Leigh
Schanfein’s “Tra:verse Re:verse,” performed by Schanfein and Mike Hodges and
performed to “MOERAE” by Mary Kouyoumdjian, is often a study in poses, forming
shapes in time with music in a way that simultaneously respects the score and
underestimates its intricacies. Instead of stopping to show the audience Mike’s
impressive arm balance or Leigh’s curling backbend, “Tra:verse Re:verse” could loosen itself from the grips of time and choreography and let music and
the wiles of the body take over. This occurs as the piece slows into a an undulating
improvisation; anticipating an end, the duet became free and wild. Leigh’s head
throw back to reveal a dip underneath the chin that hollows even more deeply
as she arched backwards. The throat’s skin turns white as it pulled taut. Time
expands and the body grows with it, as the dance shushes to a close.

If
taut skin is pleasurable in moments of stretching outwards, it is dissatisfying
when it contracts inwards as if seeking bone. Insecure dancers in other works pulled the choreography in towards themselves and held
onto memorized movement with tightness that that should only exist for
the musicians’ string instruments. A small, two-tiered stage with a slippery
floor and musicians often crowding a large part of the downstage area are
undoubtedly disconcerting obstacles and responsible for the dancers
apprehensions. But the choreography also sometimes felt stilted and unsure, with an adherence to the music’s downbeat and not enough exploration of the score. Alisa Fendley’s
“Exhume” was a repetitive dance of theme and variation that spanned 6 musical
movements and failed to to arc or spiral with the serpentine playing of the two
violinists alongside them onstage.

The
musicians exercised playfulness in their execution of the art form that many of
the night’s dances missed. It was as though in the dancers and choreographers
desire to fulfill and acknowledge the live musical accompaniment, they forgot to
challenge and defy expectations. Where did Merce Cunningham of ‘chance procedures’
go? John Cage’s musical descendants were certainly playing in Periapsis’s
Inaugural Concert. It was in the dancing that excitement of the unknown was
missed.

In
these two artists – Cunningham the choreographer and Cage the composer –
Periapsis finds good company. Dance and music are often linked and in Periapsis, neither art form upstages the other. Periapsis makes the dance and music equals, but it is up to the artists to match one another. When one falters, Periapsis provides the great bonus allowing the viewer to shift focus to the visual or auditory, making no part of the evening unsatisfying. The opportunity this forum gives for
choreographers to create dance, often on original musical scores, can only
heighten the propensity for chance, for excitement and for the unknown.